UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) External Situation Report 17 October 2014 HIGHLIGHTS  UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon made a strong call to turn pledges into action, appealing to the international community to provide the $1 billion needed to fight Ebola  The UN Ebola Response Operational Planning Conference in Accra will be attended today by senior officials to consolidate and finalize the Ebola emergency response operational plan  UNMEER Ebola Crisis Manager for Sierra Leone officially welcomed by the President Key Political and Economic Developments 1. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon made a strong call to turn pledges into action, appealing to the international community to provide the $1 billion that will enable the crisis response to get ahead of the curve and meet its target of reducing the rate of transmission by December 1st. The Secretary General also saluted the courage of the medical and support personnel working on the front lines and offered condolences to the family of Abdel Fadeel Mohammed Basheer, a laboratory technician and United Nations volunteer from Sudan who died this week from Ebola virus disease (EVD). 2. The UN Ebola Response Operational Planning Conference, arranged by UNMEER in Accra, Ghana (15-18 October) has led inter-agency discussions on putting together a credible operational plan to combat EVD. Senior officials, including Chef de Cabinet of the UN Secretary General, Ms Susana Malcorra, Director General of the WHO Dr. Margaret Chan, Special Envoy Dr. David Nabarro and Executive Director of WFP, Ms Ertharin Cousin will attend with SRSG Banbury today to consolidate and finalize the Ebola emergency response operational plan. 3. UNMEER Ebola Crisis Manager (ECM) for Sierra Leone, Amadu Kamra, was officially welcomed by the President of Sierra Leone, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma. The ECM also chaired a meeting of the diplomatic community on the occasion of the visit of the USAID Administrator, Mr. Raj Shah and the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Bjorn Brende. 4. The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, said that closing national borders to people from countries hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak is “not an effective strategy” for stopping the EVD - it must be stopped in the three worst-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Human Rights 5. UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, stated that respect for the rights of survivors and affected communities are at risk of being sacrificed. He also stressed that a disregard for human rights to things like health, education, sanitation and good governance had allowed Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to become fertile ground for the outbreak in the first place. 6. Human Rights Watch has said some EVD quarantines had been ineffective and did not meet human rights standards as they disproportionately impact people unable to evade the restrictions, including the elderly, the poor, and people with chronic illness or disability. Medical 7. The Government of Sierra Leone has reported that EVD has killed at least two people in what was the last remaining district in the country unaffected by the virus. 8. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued an alert for all passengers who travelled on an October 13 flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Texas. Authorities want to interview 132 people who flew on a plane with an Ebola-infected nurse - the second American to be infected within the US - who had not yet become symptomatic. 9. A person who had been in contact with the Spanish nurse who contracted EVD is to be hospitalized after developing a fever. Madrid's international airport also activated emergency measures on Thursday after a passenger arriving on an Air France flight was suspected of possibly having EVD. UNMEER│unmeersitreps@un.org 10. A French nurse suspected of having caught the Ebola virus through contact with an infected humanitarian worker was admitted to a hospital near Paris. 11. Liberian Transport Minister Angela Cassell-Bush has quarantined herself after her personal driver became sick. 12. Customs and health officials at airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Newark and Washington have started taking the temperatures of passengers from three affected countries. 13. France will start carrying out health checks on Saturday on travellers arriving by plane from Guinea. Medics at Paris’s airport will take the temperature of passengers arriving from the daily flights still operating from the Guinean capital Conakry. The checks will be carried out before passengers enter the airport building by medical staff with the help of the Red Cross and French emergency response services. France and the Red Cross will also be helping Guinea to step up existing checks on passengers boarding flights in Conakry. 14. EU health ministers agreed to launch an immediate review (carried out by the WHO) of the screening of passengers departing EVD affected countries. A health ministers meeting in Brussels had also agreed to coordinate measures at entry points to the 28-nation EU, although any decision on screening for Ebola rests with individual countries. 15. The WHO will send experts to test EVD preparedness measures in the Ivory Coast and Mali. 16. Haitian authorities announced sanitary border controls to prevent EVD cases from entering and spreading in the country. 17. A Chinese drug maker informed that it has sent an experimental EVD drug to Africa for use by Chinese aid workers and is planning clinical trials. Logistics 18. The US has asked the Spanish government for permission to use US air bases in Spain of its operation to combat the Ebola crisis. Outreach and Education 19. The BBC has launched an Ebola public health information service on WhatsApp. The service will provide audio, text message alerts and images to help people get the latest public health information to combat the spread of EVD in the region. 20. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)’s report on disasters stated that the current EVD epidemic has shown that culture and beliefs are vital when tackling emergency situations. IFRC Deputy Secretary General Matthias Schmale said that the population should feel we understand their practices and in the case of EVD, funerals are an opportunity to make a community realize no one is against their culture. 21. UNDP is working in Liberia with youth groups in various communities to deploy some of the 1,182 volunteers trained to conduct contact tracing and identification of Ebola-related cases where there have been reports of secret burials taking place. 22. A Sierra Leone Government and UNICEF-led Survivors Conference opened yesterday (16 October) and will continue today (17 October) in Kenema, Sierra Leone. The aim is to provide psycho-social support tools, and an opportunity for survivors to tell their story, as well as feedback on how to engage with their communities. Resource Mobilisation 23. Towards the overall needs and requirements for the Ebola crisis response (USD 988 million), as outlined by OCHA, USD 377 million has been received to date (38.1 per cent of the total ask of USD 988 million). Separately, the UN Ebola Multi-Partner Trust Fund (MPTF), one of a number of mechanisms for funding the overall response, has so far received deposits of USD 100,000 out of total pledges of USD 32 million. 24. The Swedish government informed that it would contribute an additional 100 million kronor (USD 13.89 million), taking its overall spending to around 239.3 million kronor. 25. Liberia said it needs 2.4 million boxes of gloves in the next six months, but it has only 18,000 boxes. It also needs about 1.2 million hooded overalls within the same time frame, but it has only 165,000. It has 4,900 body bags nationwide, and will need 85,00 more over next six months. UNMEER│unmeersitreps@un.org 26. London Mining, which owns an iron ore mine in Sierra Leone and has built an Ebola treatment centre, has reportedly gone bankrupt. The collapse of the company raises concerns about international efforts to combat Ebola. 27. All humanitarian partners, including donors and recipient agencies, are encouraged to inform OCHA's Financial Tracking Service (FTS - http://fts.unocha.org) of cash and in-kind contributions by e-mailing: fts@un.org. Essential Services 28. UNFPA reported that EVD is wiping out gains in safe motherhood made in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. An estimated 800,000 women in these three countries should give birth in the next 12 months but many pregnant women are afraid to visit or have been turned away from overstretched health facilities. UNFPA says that USD 64.5 million is needed to provide reproductive and maternal health services in the next three months. 29. Some 108,000 children due to sit their secondary school exams have missed them, says the UNICEF education head in Sierra Leone. Teachers are still being paid and the government has just launched a radio education programme aired over a 12-hour period to four different age groups. Upcoming Events  13-17 October – U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah will travel to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Senegal  15-18 October – UN Ebola Response Operational Planning Conference in UNMEER HQ, Accra  16-17 October – Survivors’ Conference in Kenema, Sierra Leone, hosted by the Government of Sierra Leone and UNICEF  17 October – Next meeting of the Global Ebola Response Coalition  11 December – Global Compact CEO-level Action Pledge Event at the UN Attachments and Resources  OCHA financial tracking of overall contributions to the Ebola response UNMEER│unmeersitreps@un.org